A Father-Daughter Journey into Mountaineering Article by Kirsten Auble. Photos by Scott and Kirsten Auble.
M
y journey to loving the mountains began, not on rock, but on rock-and-roll. You see, by age 17, my dad and I had already spent years pursuing three life quests together, one leading to the next. And it all started with Herman’s Hermits.
Yeah, that mop-topped 60s British pop group. I came home one day from middle school at age 10, and told my dad I’d heard this funny song “Henry VIII, I Am”, and asked what he knew about this band.That led to many hours of “School of Rock”-type whiteboard sessions that became a virtual masters course on the history of classic rock. I was hooked deep, and over the next few years, we flung ourselves around the world together to see our favorite bands on their native ground — the Rolling Stones in London, The Pretenders in Akron, Tom Petty in one of his final California performances, AC/DC in their last Australian concert, and scores of others. This quest may only end when the great rockers aren’t with us any more, but the music will always fuel me. Parents try most kids out in various team sports to test talent, and I was no exception. But I was lousy on teams because I never liked to bump and get physically intimate. So at 12, when my dad suggested I hit a tennis ball around on a neighborhood court, I didn’t have much to lose. Now 6 years later, as an NCAA college tennis player, the years of hard training, millions of balls hit and countless hours travelling to tournaments are the second adventure my dad and I have shared every step of. By 15, Dad and I were deep in music and tennis quest modes when he called me to his computer to watch a video of Peter Whittaker of RMI taking his 15-year-old daughter Gabriella up Kilimanjaro with a few father-daughter teams. I knew my dad
10 MAZAMAS
did some sort of “climbing,” but my teenage brain equated this to a bunch of old guys hiking, maybe using some weird clips and tools out there. Then seeing a girl exactly my age share all the preparation, the extreme effort and exotic experiences that went into the Whittaker father-daughter expedition, I started to realize why someone would willingly work so hard in the altitude and cold for what had previously seemed to be a short-lived reward. When the video was over we just looked at each other thinking the same thing — we need to do this. Within a few months, Dad had hooked up with a team of climbing friends who had also dreamed of conquering Kilimanjaro—including a few Mazamas—signed on with a Tanzanian guiding service, and we had the “roof of Africa” clearly in our sights a few months out. I can admit now that I had no clue what I was signing up for, so I dug into our plan to understand the climb, train and prepare. Fitting and learning how to use my gear, training hikes, researching the mountain and route, and frequent workouts in the Evolution altitude chamber formed our weeks. The hardest part though was convincing mom to let me skip three weeks of high school to go to Africa and answering the constant questioning of friends—“You’re doing what now!?” With the collaboration of my teachers, I completed weeks of advance homework and was finally ready for the big climb.
